In the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting tragedy, Adam Lanza, the shooter, murdered 20 children and 6 teachers. Some people consider this event a terrible tragedy, because they were very moved by the deaths of 20 children. While others consider this event a tragedy because it is rare, one of a kind and a freak accident that certainly does not happen every day, or even every year. According to nces.ed.gov, the chance of a random shooting occurring at any elementary school in the United States is 1 in 88,962, and the chance of an elementary school child being killed is about 1 out of 23 million, less than the chance of winning a jackpot for an average lottery which is 1 in 15 million. Wayne LaPierre, vice president of the National Rifle Association, addressed the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in his speech "Transcript of the Newtown Shooting Speech." In his speech, he uses an excessive amount of pathos to emotionally arouse his audience and uses strong language with aggressive behavior to convince the audience to agree with what he has to say. On the other hand, Sam Harris, author of best-selling books and whose work has been discussed in major magazines such as the New York Times and Scientific American. In his article “The Riddle of the Gun,” he provides many statistical values ​​and facts to neutralize people's feelings about shooting. In this article, I will compare each writer's strategies and explain their effectiveness. In both articles respectively, the strategies used by LaPierre and Harris are effective towards their own audiences but would not have worked the other way around. In LaPierre's speech, one of the main strategies he uses is pathos while Harris uses logos, although they both worked well for their specific audience...... middle of paper.. .... ss shooting or homicide, a human life or lives are lost. Although LaPierre's and Harris's compare and contrast strategies worked well with their respective audiences, Harris's comparison is more effective with a broad audience than LaPierre's because it provides logic that is unanimously accepted by people. One of the other main strategies LaPierre uses in his speech is rhetorical questions, while Harris uses it much less. A rhetorical question is a question designed to have only one correct answer. LaPierre uses it to force his audience to think the same way and agree with him and Harris uses it to establish his views and opinions to show the audience where he stands on the issue. Last but not least, Harris did a better job dealing with prolepsy than LaPierre since he didn't have one. Prolepsis is when the author anticipates the opposition's best argument and addresses it in advance..